


decent

by followsrabbit



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 20:02:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/pseuds/followsrabbit
Summary: Charles just wants Manon to give him a chance. Manon just wants their date to end.Rain intervenes.





	decent

**Author's Note:**

> So... I wasn't going to try writing fic for them yet, because I'm still really iffy on HOW to write them (Manon especially), but the idea of Manon wearing Charles's leather jacket just wouldn't leave me alone??
> 
> Anyway, I apologize for any ridiculous ooc-ness.
> 
> This basically picks up around 2x02 of the original, and assumes Manon makes the same 'I'll go out with you if you apologize to my friend' deal with Charles that Noora made with William.

Manon was already regretting the date.

To be fair, she’d been regretting it from the minute she'd agreed to it. From the first text Charles had sent her about it. From the moment integrity had started in on her to actually hold up her end of their deal, since he  _had_  apologized to Daphne, even if that hardly made up for his asshole behavior.

(Even if Daphne was sneaking glances at him in the hallways and gushing about him at lunch again. Manon stood by the belief that getting Charles to apologize had been the right move, but it did, admittedly, have... complications she hadn’t considered.)

But the date—

Right now, Manon was mostly regretting the date because nothing altogether terrible had happened on it. Yet.

Charles hadn’t forced too much conversation on her, which was surprisingly (aggravatingly) considerate of him. And he hadn’t dragged her to one of his parties or basketball games like she’d been expecting. He could have made an exhibition of this, just to show everyone that he could get anyone he wanted, even her, the outspoken first year who had embarrassed him in front of his friends.

That was what she'd been expecting. Manon _knew_ guys like Charles Munier. From the minute he’d asked her to _help him with his homework_ all those weeks ago, she’d understood exactly what he was after. Not her, just the proof that he could get her. The bragging rights of winning her over.

But there was no one to see them together here. He’d taken her to a public garden not too far from her apartment. They weren’t technically alone, but the few couples and dog-walkers nearby weren’t the audience of classmates she’d dreaded.

“Not two thousand years then?” Charles said once they reached a bench. He sat. She raised an eyebrow. He raised one back. With a sigh, she followed him onto the bench's green wood, folding herself as many inches away from him as she could. Crossing her legs, just to make sure her knee wouldn’t brush his.

“It would have been longer,” Manon said. She could feel the hardness in her voice, the cool distance. Colder than the late spring breeze currently whispering her curls against the nape of her neck. “I’m doing this—”

“For your friend,” Charles finished for her. “I know.”

A pause. “Good.” A press of her red lips—she’d debated foregoing lipstick, but refused to change her make-up routine for him—together.

Another pause.

“My grandmother used to take me here,” Charles said, gesturing to the green of the park, the height of the surrounding trees, “when I was younger.” And then he launched into a story from his childhood, clearly expecting sympathy and empathy and other things that Manon supplanted with a straight face.

She’d agreed to this. She would listen. He would run out of sentimental stories to spin for her. And then they’d leave, and she’d never have to think about the way his eyebrows darted as he spoke or the crookedness of his smile or the _intensity_ of his stare or anything about Charles Munier. Ever again.

Manon stared ahead, into the trees, as he went on.

“You don’t like my story,” he interrupted himself to observe.

A glance back at him. “This isn’t an American soap opera. I’m not going to melt because you have a cute story about your grandmother.”

“Cute?” 

Manon rolled her eyes.

Wryness pulled at the corners of Charles's lips as he looked up at the cloud-dark sky. “What would someone decent talk about?”

Tension in Manon’s shoulders. A gap between her lips. _Stop acting like a like a fucking cliché. And start being someone decent_. Her own words, thrown at him weeks and weeks ago, echoing through her head

“Decent people don’t blackmail girls into dates.”

Charles didn’t look fazed when he replied, “This was your idea.”

And Manon had a response to that, she did, only the sky started to fall down that very second, so it didn’t really matter.

One drop of rain on her cheek. Then another. And then a flood, pouring from the sky, everywhere.

Charles swore as they hurried up from the bench, running together towards his car without saying a word. His hand found hers, gripping it tight, pulling her along, and Manon should have pulled away, would have, only he was annoyingly tall, and his strides would get them dry quicker than hers.

(She didn’t hold his hand back though.)

(Manon told herself that was protest enough.)

By the time they reached his—still irritatingly luxurious—car, the rain had pasted Manon’s hair to her cheeks, her shirt to her waist and chest and hips. She slammed the door shut and then wrapped her arms around herself, even though the rain hadn’t been _that_ cold.

Charles hadn’t fared much better—not above the neck, anyway. His styled brown hair had gone flatter and darker on his forehead, his whole face drenched. But at least his leather jacket had provided better protection for the rest of him than could be said of her white blouse.

The top had looked almost conservative when she’d picked it out of her closet that morning, but it had gone—Manon cringed when she looked down at herself, then crossed her arms tighter at chest—see-through. Her pointedly modest shirt had gone drenched and useless and see-through.

Charles didn’t say anything as he shrugged out of his leather jacket, its sleeves speckled with raindrops but otherwise fine. _His_ white shirt looked completely dry, opaque, beneath.

Manon bit her lower lip when he handed the jacket to her over the center console. Shook her head. “No, thank you.”

(It wasn’t a jersey, but it was still _his_. And she wasn’t.)

Charles looked up at the ceiling. “Take it.”

Her eyes flickered down to her (ruined) blouse again. It remained very see-through.

“Or not,” Charles amended. “If you prefer your soaked shirt, by all means.” He gave her a pointed, amused look that she expected to drip below her face but didn't.

Manon grabbed the black leather from him, and tucked herself inside. “How charming of you.”

A shrug. “How decent of me?” Another wry twist of his mouth.

The jacket swallowed her whole, covering her soaked blouse and the ends of her sopping hair and the beginnings of her thighs. Warm inside, if outwardly wet.

She shook her head again, but couldn’t stop a (traitor) smile from stealing her lips. Which she knew he saw, because he was staring again. It was decent of him to wait until now to rake his eyes over her, but Manon didn’t let herself follow that thought much farther.

(From the way Charles’s smile grew into a grin, she had an uncomfortable feeling he could read it anyway.)

"Just drive, Charles-Henri."


End file.
